- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
Bikes are awesome. I would love to experience the joy of waking up in the morning and riding a bike to work. No traffic, healthy and all that good shit. I live, however, 40min away from my work by car and 3 hours by bike, one way. I dont see this changing in the foreseeable future so my idea of freedom has to be something different.
Nothing feels more like freedom than being stuck in a traffic jam.
God gave man vehicles
inexpensive
lol, most bikes nowadays cost $1000. Also stolen every time so you have to call Uber. Also can’t get groceries or take the highway.
less likely to kill
More likely to be killed.
You can ride your bike on many highways in the USA at least. Generally you cannot on the freeway, but there are some exceptions — in California there are requirements about bike accessibility which means that certain segments of a freeway may be bike accessible.
If you live far from a store then groceries are a problem unless you use a trailer, but if you live in a city it’s totally reasonable to use a bike (or walk) for your weekly groceries.
And you can get a new Trek FX for under $600, and that’s just from a quick search. Yes of you want Ultegra or better and a carbon frame, the sky is the limit.
Most bikes now cost about $100 brand new at the store unless you’re buying some specialty shit. Less likely to kill is if both people are on bikes, should have been obvious.
$100 means you’re buying Walmart crap. Don’t do that, they are super poor quality, which means they’re as likely to break as get you to your destination.
Buy from a quality brand and spend $500-1000 or so. You’ll be much happier and it’ll last longer.
Also can’t get groceries
Americans unironically believe this. Pathetic
There are a few grocery stores in a 30 minute range. But none we could continue to afford long term.
The two which we can afford are an hour away. Including gass costs they are much cheaper long term.
Why i chose to live here? It was the only place we could realistically afford.
I am neither considered poor nor do i own/drive a car. (My partner already did before they met me) for perspective. We also have full jobs and kids. So very little time for small trips.
I blame urban planning and townhall. There is a small discounter who has made repeated requests to expand near our area with repeated refusals because “we already have to many (wealthy class) grocery stores.“
bruh you live in a food desert
Not if i had money. Theres a reasonably big store a 15 minute walk away and the few times i am there for an emergency and see the markup they demand for the same products my hate for capitalism grows.
can’t afford food
thinks isn’t poor
Its difficult to buy a week’s worth of groceries on a bike, which is often the norm in the US partly because of the car-centric nature. It’s a trip or ordeal to get groceries.
I routinely buy a week’s worth of groceries on my bike. Every week.
For a family or just for yourself? I guess I was thinking through the lens of buying for a whole family, which I know I would struggle to do on my bike.
I’m buying for two, but I’m also only loading one basket on my pannier rack. I could easily add another for double the capacity, along with maybe also a backpack. There’s also the possibility of using a trailer.
You had me curious so I just went on Facebook marketplace and searched “bike”
The first screen of results was all bikes under £100
You realise you don’t need to buy a carbon fiber Tour de France bike to get around a town, right?
Sure, but you should get something better than a big box bike so it doesn’t suck to ride. Get what you can afford, but you’ll be so much happier with something $500+ from a decent brand than Walmart crap.
$1000 is actually pretty inexpensive for a quality bike. Carbon fiber tends to start around $3-4k, and is totally not worth it IMO, just get a quality aluminum or steel bike.
Meh, disagree. The bike I liked the most was the one I bought used for 15€ from a dude down the street, brought it to the old grandpa who fixes bikes for cheap for fun, paid him 35€ for some maintenance, check the gearbox, new brake saddles, oil everything up.
50€ in total, awesome city bike, although a bit heavy and without all the fancy shit, but I just left it chained to a lamp in the street, nobody wants to steal a 50yo bike and even if, it was just 15€. When I moved to a different city I sold it to my neighbor for 15€ again. He still uses it from what I hear.
You probably got a quality bike for a steal then. I mention a price range because you’re much less likely to get something that’ll fall apart in a few months.
As long as you avoid big box brands (Huffy and whatnot), you’ll be fine. You can get a decent used Surly or Giant or something for $200-300 if you know what to look for, but that’s also the range for crappy big box bikes new, so I increase the number to $500.
not really, for daily commutes any piece of junk that brakes and rolls will do. rode only ~50 bucks bikes for the last five-ish years, old city bikes are indestructible
How far was your commute? If it’s like 2-3 miles, yeah, you should be fine, because you could just walk when something breaks. If it’s 5-10 miles, that’s a lot less feasible.
My commute went through some farmland for a few miles, far from the bus lines, so having something more reliable was more important. I spent about $500 and put thousands of miles on it over the first few years of ownership. The only issues I had were flat tires, so I put on denser tires and that went away (Schwalbe Marathon Plus). I would average 15-20mph, depending on wind, and I don’t race or anything like that.
A big box bike might work okay for a while, or maybe the person who put it together did it wrong. Even if it’s put together right, they use crappy components so it’ll be a giant pain to ride vs a better bike. They’re heavy, have lots of friction in the drive train, the tires are crap, and shifting often breaks after a year or so.
Even with a $500+ bike, you’ll save money, and probably on your first year if it’s replacing a car or bus. Do yourself a favor and get a lower end bike from a quality brand.
My local bike coop is full of very dependable, freshly tuned bikes that average around $150, built with love and care by expiriend mechanics. If you have issues with your bike, those same mechanics will guide you through the process of fixing it and give you access to every tool you could possibly need to do so, all for free or suggested donation.
Oh yeah, if you have a local coop, do that. Just avoid stores like Walmart and Target.
Some are actually decent from Walmart now, specifically their Ozark trail lineup. Basically the current CEO is really into trail riding, so they sell mountain bikes that are actually good for $400.
Huh, I haven’t tried them for years, but every Huffy I’ve seen is utter crap. Maybe the Ozark line is acceptable to get started.
That said, if you’re into mountain biking, the entry price is ridiculous, with $1000 being considered “borderline crap” for a hard-tail (no shocks). I probably wouldn’t trust a Walmart bike on downhill MTB (worried about tire slippage or the chain popping off), but it should be fine around town and on some gentle trails. Even so, I recommend a hybrid or “city” bike of you’re mostly sticking to pavement, they don’t have shocks to sap your power and they’re super simple to maintain. $500 gets you a great hybrid from a good company, and usually free service for a year or two.
I mean, I got used carbon full suspension mountain bike for $500 used a few months ago, there are plenty of decent hardtail bikes lightly used for $400-500 in my area.
You can get pretty good deals under 500, at least here in Europe ($ to € relatively close).
A local shop here for example has some fully serviced and functional, partially modernized, 90s mountain bikes between 200 to 400 eur. And that’s with a trend tax, since those are getting somewhat popular nowadays for how great commuters they make
I used to get all of my groceries by bike I did this by adding 2 baskets to the sides of the rear rack and one to the front and wearing a backpack if I am getting a lot of stuff larger items can be attached to the rack with bungee cords
You might be surprised by how much you can Carry by bike and this wasn’t even a cargo bike either
lol, do you think $1000 is expensive compared to a $30k car? I ride daily and have never had to “call uber” because my bike got stolen. I get groceries on my bike every week. Why would you want to take the highway on a bike? You know what’s most likely to kill? Heart disease from sitting on your fat lazy ass
I mean you could attach trailer on bike drive that way, it would be slower but works
Why would you go to highway when off-road is much better
Or baskets to carry a reasonable amount of groceries.
The average American spends $10k YEARLY on car. You could buy a new bike every month and still end up paying less.
Cuz putting on a raincoat or some warm clothes is too much for these weak ass people.
Well… that said, I’ve recently ridden by bike, and during the last few kilometers I barely could move one of my fingers, because I didn’t wear any kind of gloves or coat. It was cold as shit, but I still enjoyed the ride in the end, lol.
Yeah good gloves are for sure a must in the winter. The upside is that you have less bugs around when its cold :)
I get the sentiment, but a raincoat isn’t enough on its own. Sure, if you’ve got a 5 minute commute, you can get there quickly and spend minimal time in the rain.
A 20 minute commute in the pissing rain and you will be arriving soaked from head to toe. Not ideal for most. Yeh if you can shower at work then great, but then you’ve still got wet clothes you need to dry.
I’m very lucky that I have a 5 minute ride to work, all downhill, so unless the weather is biblical, I don’t really have an excuse for taking the car.
I’m very lucky that I have a 5 minute ride to work, all downhill
That ride home though.
Yeah…
sounds like a great workout to destress from the day followed up with a nice shower at home
Just wear a proper bike jacket and rain pants. I’ve biked 30 minute commutes in pouring rain, and all I had to do when arriving at work was take off that outer layer.
As someone who lives in Belgium where it is more rainy than the UK apparently, you just need 120€ of good biking gear (maybe 150 now with inflation)
I have some cheap Columbia rain pants, some cheap rain covers for shoes, a decent marmot raincoat, and a very cheap cover for my helmet. I bike 40-45 minutes each way to work.
I arrive to work dryer like that when it is very rainy, especially my feet, than when I have to park in a parking garage and walk 10-15 minutes. With an umbrella and raincoat.
I mean, it definitely isn’t fun at all biking in that, but unless it is really a downpour, it is not crazy.
In The Nederlands people bike to school, which can be a bike ride of more than an hour away.
A raincote is not enough, but a rainsuit will do the job.
My issue with biking to work is the sweat …
Yeah exactly, try bicycling to work in the summer along the US gulf coast. You’ll either arrive at the office dead from heat stroke or soaking wet from sweat.
Sure, automobile-focused city planning is a problem, but let’s not pretend bicycles are a universal answer for all locales.
Yeah. It’s impracticable for many jobs but it would be a shame to reject cycling out of hand because of potential weather issues.
I just wear bike shorts and jersey whatever the weather. I have work pants and shirt that I change into in the restrooms at work. There’s no shower. I have wet wipes and a little hand towel.
It’s pretty rare that it’s raining heavily enough for long enough that I can’t get to work between downpours.
By far the most important thing is mud gards on your wheels.
As I said, it’s not for everyone but I suspect that it’s not actually prohibitive for most people.
I dare you to travel on your own bicycle in the depths of winter across the USA in the same timeframe as a car.
Traveling across the entirety of the US by car in the middle of winter sounds fucking miserable. That’s what trains are for.
If you happen to enjoy that kind of thing and aren’t on a tight timeline it is fun as hell. Like a mechanical version of hiking.
Like hiking, most people don’t enjoy it or aren’t really up to the challenge.
I think the guy above you was just talking about regular driving on the freeway, not overlanding in a 4x4.
Like a mechanical version of hiking
I can’t wait to describe driving this way to a friend so that we can both share in the laughter I’m enjoying right now.
Seriously though, with the right kind of terrain and conditions driving is a real challenge. If you have never driven off road through fields in wet, snowy conditions where stopping is likely to mean being unable to start going again and needing to guage how fast to approach a slope to maintain momentum it might sound silly.
Anyone who has never driven on an unpaved road might find it funny. Like how anyone who has only ridden a bike on paved roads might not understand the fun of going mountain biking off a defined path might find that funny.
Offroading on a motorcycle is more fun than a four wheel car most of the time, but all of things can be fun.
I own a lifted hatchback with gravel tires that I occasionally take down timber trails to camp or shoot. That’s maybe why I understood what you meant. But the way it came across, it just soubded like you need to go hiking more :P
Yeah, I was going for the ‘crossing difficult terrain challenge’ part and probably should have said it was like hiking from your couch.
Trains only travel along previously laid rails, at specific times. Plus, you’ll need to rent a car at the other end to get anywhere. Better to take your own car and have personalized comfort the whole way. Also, yes, it does sound miserable. But if you’re in a car, turn up the heater, turn on the radio or your favorite music, and just vibe while driving safely.
Cars also travel along previously laid paths. I mean, technically there are off road ones that dont have to, but unless youre on your own land trying to get from one place to another without following the roads wont go so well.
Off-road travel, even in a car not explicitly made for it, is usually safer than traveling a derailed train. But I get your point.
But if the cities were built for people rather than cars, you wouldn’t need to rent a car at your destination. And trains run often if they haven’t been critically underfunded for decades. And you can’t really drive safely, even if you’re a perfect driver, someone can run you off the road. Trains are orders of magnitude safer.
Not everyone lives in cities in the US and even then they are really spread out. It’s the one thing I think the world doesn’t comprehend about the US; we’re spread way out.
Where are you going in rural america that you need to rent a car if you arent already living there?
Family, maybe.
Then… they can get their family to come pick’em up in their pickup truck.
It isnt like the rest of the world doesnt have rural areas, unless one lives in like singapore or something. Something like 80% of the US population lives in urban areas, and most trips arent trips between cities except perhaps for those that are close to one another anyways. So even if one accepts that rural areas are car centric by nature, that still leaves the vast majority of the population that isnt affected by that. The buildings within cities being spread out over a wide space making transit less efficient is a failure of city design rather than something fundamental and unchangeable about the US, we have a fairly serious housing shortage anyways, if we really wanted to decrease car dependence we could absolutely build up denser housing in urban cores to shift the population over time into areas that allow for more efficient transportation.
we could absolutely build up denser housing in urban cores to shift the population over time into areas that allow for more efficient transportation.
Sounds like prison
🤡
Or you know, just how cities work…
No, it really doesn’t, unless one simply does not know what “prison” means. Improving access to transportation is entirely counter to the point of a prison, given that the primary characteristic of a prison is being hard to leave.
Not everyone lives in cities in the US
But 80% do, so what’s your excuse for refusing to solve the problem for the vast majority? The “and even then they are really spread out” is not it, BTW.
Money for the most part. It’s cheaper to own, no HoA or Condo association. Not to mention it’s quieter.
- “'Murica big” has fuck-all to do with anything
- Owning a single-family house in the suburbs only seems cheaper than owning a condo because single-family houses are massively subsidized. You’re a welfare queen and you don’t even realize it.
- Cars are the things that make cities loud in the first place.
My brother in christ, the reason we got this spread out in the first place was a robust national network of passenger rail lines.
I dare you to cross the Atlantic in a car.
You might need to rendezvous with another vessel mid-trip for gas, but amphibious cars do exist.
Best of luck my dude
But demonstrate the incontrovertible need for a car during one’s regular commute through an average modern city. And I’m even offering the main exception - busses and taxis/ride sharing/whatever the current nomenclature, as I consider public transportation to be its own independent thing, unrelated to Cars.
I think the people who would enjoy such a venture via bike have or are already doing it, the rest of us would just like to be able to ride the bike through the city without having to play Frogger with three lanes filled with enraged lumps of cortisol.
I live in a city of 60,000 people in Colorado. The closest train station is 15 minutes away, by car. There is a bus that will take me to the train station, but it’s an hour to walk to the closest one and the bus comes once an hour, 6 am to 7 pm, M-F. I can’t afford to spend 4 hours on a quick trip to the grocery store and never leave my house on the weekends.
There are bike lanes on the main roads (4-6 lanes 50+ mph traffic). More than half the vehicles around here are massive jacked up trucks and SUVs. I have a bike, but do not have a death wish. It regularly snows, making bike riding a no-go for most of 4 months of the year.
I am very much in favor of reducing car traffic. But it’s not feasible for so many people with the way cities are designed and the lack of public transport.
I mean, that isnt really an argument against public transit and bike infrastructure, its just an argument that the way to do it isnt to just tell people to stop driving and expect it to happen, one has to redesign cities to make these options feel like the safe and natural choice.
This was my thought as well, goes to show we need better long-range public transportation!
And bikes should be used for more granular destination points, once the bulk is covered via whatever works best as public transport in a given area.
we need better long-range public transportation!
That’s what trains are for.
What you actually need is a different city design. Office and housing need to be within 2-3 miles not 20-30, then bikes, buses and stuff become reasonable alternative modes of transportation. Even buying groceries could be done without a car.
But the US of A chose to move housing out of the cities into suburbs dozens of miles away. As long as you don’t change that you’ll stay car-dependent. It’s just too far.
It will also help to build more apartments that are cheap to rent. That increased concentration of people will make it possible for small local markets, restaurants, etc. to survive. Cost of living should also go down a bit because you’ll reach more people with less infrastructure. That’ll also increase tax revenue for the city. It’s win-win for everyone.
But the US of A chose to move housing out of the cities into suburbs dozens of miles away. As long as you don’t change that you’ll stay car-dependent. It’s just too far.
Agreed, that right there is the problem. But it wasn’t just a one-time choice it’s an ongoing decision: (A) inexpensive large house in the suburbs/rural area or (B) more expensive small apartment in the city. Personally I choose B but I have relatives who live in rural areas (large houses, huge yards, 1 car per person) who think I’m crazy.
Fair enough, I’m all for trains! And I agree, they really do have the most potential out of pretty much everything else (to be fair, they each excel at different things) in terms of people over distance.
And I get what you mean about the structures, starting to see the same tendencies over here as well. Add to that the fact that our average is about 0.6 cars per person and growing, or something like that, plus an outdated infrastructure which is basically frozen due to being surrounded by historical buildings (and god forbid we do anything with those, ours is to wait and watch them slowly crumble!), and you have traffic jams in even the smaller cities and towns. It’s fucking horrid, is what it is…
Plus every new neighborhood which is added around the city is either a new residential area filled with tumor-like arrangements of apartment buildings with, of course, insufficient infrastructure to support said 0.6 cars per capita, so the possibility of extending a public transport line of any sort to that area is basically nulliffied from the start. The main bus line for the residential area in which I lived in my old city used to run along the industrial traffic lanes - you’d frequently see lines of fully loaded semi trucks waiting for the bus to finish transfering passengers. Because they had nowhere else to put it, they just sold the area to developers without a sexond thought given to how they’d actually connect the area to the rest of the city.
And to get back to the trains, we actually have a decently extensive railway network, but all it’s seen for the past few decades has been basic maintenance, and our trains are the same. I mean, most of our engines are from the Communist era and most of our train cars are hand-me-downs from Germany - and they’re really nice train cars, honestly, the sleeping cars have wood paneling, in-cabin grooming sink, and actual mattresses, they’re a splendid bit of engineering - and they start looking like hammered shit maybe half a year after being introduced. I had to make 12 900km trips by train throughout the country last year and I’d say I ended up with an immune response after at least eight or nine of them, felt flu-y for a couple of days. And, yeah, this is also a major problem with the education and level of wealth around here, but they really don’t bother actually trying to maintain a semblance of cleanliness.
So of course everyone buys one and a half cars and lugs that hunk of metal all around the place.
Checkmate liberals-tier comment. Why did you even post this?
Initially, for shits and giggles. I can’t ride a bike and I also can’t drive, so I’m stuck on foot.
Eh, I did that for a couple years in Utah and it was largely fine. When the snow got nasty, I took the bus.
That was back when my commute was 10 miles (16km) with a segregated bike path the whole way. My new commute is more than double that, so I drive. But if we weren’t so car centric, things would be more compact and I wouldn’t have this nasty commute.
Failed the brief on at least two counts. First, you took a bus when it got “nasty” - thus proving automobiles are more adaptable, and thus superior. Second, a 10 mile commute is not across the USA - granted the terrain in Utah is varied, but not coast-to-coast varied. You also didn’t put up your times vs. average car travel time for the route, so I’m going to assume that your average speed was lower, and your average time was also longer.
Took me 40 min each direction (best time was 30 min), car took 20-30 min (very little traffic) and the bus took 40+ min. But I could also skip the gym since I already got my exercise for the day, so I consider it a wash. With an ebike, I could cut that almost in half (legal top speed is 28mph, but nobody enforces that, so I could probably go 30-35mph). I average about 15-20 mph, depending on wind.
10 miles is really far for a bike commute though. If you live somewhere bike centric, you’d probably only go 3-5 miles, at which point the time difference is negligible and probably faster by bike because of no parking issues.
And the bus was only necessary because we don’t plow bike lanes. With proper infrastructure, I wouldn’t need the bus at all. My coldest commute was ~5F, and layers kept the ride completely comfortable, so the issue was literally only the lack of infrastructure.
My point isn’t to say the US is currently completely bikeable, my point is that with proper infra, it could be. We don’t have as nasty of weather as the NE and MW, but we do get low temps and snow, and I’ve seen madlads cycling in the MW in crazy weather.
50% of the Boston workforce commutes by train every day, and that’s with how notoriously bad the Boston T is considered. 100 years ago, before the advent of car centric urban design, the Boston T was twice the size it is today, servicing towns all over eastern Massachusetts. A big part of the reason that a car is your best option for pretty much anything is because our country was redesigned to make it necessary. We used to have streetcar towns here - trolley systems that ran up and down the major hubs in towns - that they straight up paved over the rails for, making things less accessible in the name of selling cars and gasoline. They’re also a major contributing factor in the death of small businesses and the rise of the giant box stores at the edge of town that you have to drive 20 minutes to in order to go food shopping.
Your argument is in bad faith, and your reasoning is disingenuous. Pretty much every large town west of the Mississippi grew around a train station. Nobody is taking away your freedom to sit in traffic on your morning commute. But imagine how much better that commute would be if you could take 50 cars off the road per bus or hundreds per light rail train. The average commuter car in the US has 1.2 people in it. If you make it so that drivers don’t have to deal with walkers and bikers, and vice versa, everybody wins.
a 10 mile commute is not across the USA
Because you don’t cross a continent by bike or car, you do it by fast or night train in which you can take your bicycle.
Or by plane if you’re in a hurry.
Was this all an attempt to “gotcha” people to prove that cars on free roads go faster and protect you better from elements than bikes? I mean, yeah of course they do. This doesn’t make them “superior” in an absolute way because superiority depends on parameters. Take cost, health benefits, maintenance costs, environmental impact and bikes would be superior.
Can’t talk about US, but in Italy the daily average by car was between 10 and 15 kilometers I seem to remember, that is 30-40min by bike at a slow pace. For that I would 100% say that provided infrastructure exists, bikes are a largely superior transportation vehicle compared to everything else. If you talk about traveling between islands I would say a boat is more efficient, or if you have to travel 500km I would say planes are. Superiority depends on the specific evaluation, that’s my point. For the kind of coast to coast trip you mentioned, in winter, I would say trains can be vastly superior to cars, for example, and they can be combined with bikes.
we weren’t so car centric, things would be more compact and I wouldn’t have this nasty commute.
Hi, a different commenter here. I love public transportation (time to sit and read! meet interesting people!) and dislike cars, but realistically we often have other considerations that city design alone wouldn’t solve.
- My most recent commute was 65 miles through a rural area – I had to live in town A to support a family member and my job was in town B.
- Before that I was in an urban area, but had to live near the hospital area for my BFF’s sake, and my job was out in the suburbs 18 miles away. No bike lanes, and public transportation took 2-3 hours one way. (and this was in a city with relatively good public transportation.)
Now I WFH so that’s cool. But the experience made me realize how complex is the problem of transportation and urban design. I mean, I agree with the fact that bikes are awesome and we need better public transportation in the US, though.
Yeah, I appreciate that it’s complex, but in the US we prioritize cars instead of people.
A properly designed system will account for lots of transportation options. This means:
- force cars to go around city centers - prevents gridlock in downtown, and improves transit and walkability/cyclability downtown; enforce with car-free zones
- buses and bike paths to connect the different parts of the city
- trains to connect cities
- highways and roads connecting smaller towns
If you go to smaller towns, a car is your best bet. If you’re going downtown, a train should be more efficient, and a car should be workable. If you live in or near a city, a bike should be sufficient.
We used to have one car because I could bike to work, but now we need too, and only because of the 2 days I commute to the office. And the worst part is that there’s a train line near my house that I could totally take to work if they actually built the line they’ve been talking about for decades. But instead of building that line (connects to a larger system, including a stop at a major sports stadium), we expanded a highway (didn’t fix traffic) and we’re building a new highway (might help somewhat). Most of those cars are traveling along the proposed train route (it runs parallel to the highway), yet the highway gets priority.
I propose we rethink transit in terms of moving people instead of cars.
Yeah agreed it’s an interesting problem bc it has so many components… unfortunately when we try to get one part of it implemented, people say: it’s not going to solve the whole problem so why bother. I’m still learning about it and so are most people. But I think even the most truck-loving person has an older relative who can’t drive any more, or maybe they themselves can’t drive bc of a DUI or something, so there’s always an opening for learning more.
Yup. Fortunately there are professions for solving these types of problems, so we need to stop demanding specific solutions and let them do their job.
It turns out adding more lanes often makes things worse, and the better solution is to replace cars with higher density transit, so your truck loving friend will likely be better off if we invest in transit instead of highways. I want to take transit to work instead of adding to traffic, but that currently takes 4x as long as driving (2-ish hours each way). You should absolutely be able to drive if you want, and the more practical other modes of transportation are, the less cars will be on the road since a lot of people would rather ride than drive.
I am curious, how much time did it take to make those 18miles (28km?) by car? I have just checked in my city, that has really nice public transportation (Tallinn), and to cross essentially the whole city (~20km, a route that nobody does, so probably not very well connected) on Monday at 9am it takes 59m by public transport (2 buses) and 40m by car (it takes 30m generally, but traffic). 2-3h or 2/3 times that to do 50% more distance looks like public transportation is not that good, did you mean “good for US standards”?
That’s impossible and no one is implying that bikes should replace other modes of transport for interstate travel. However, I bike commute in winter in Wisconsin and it takes less time than riding the bus. Driving a car is faster than my bike commute, but only marginally so.
Then bikes are not more freeing than cars. The means of easy, unscheduled, interstate mobility should be the American symbol of freedom. That’s not a bicycle.
I love how you explicitly defined your requirements to be exclusive to car travel. Riding on a good train or bus network is incredibly easy and affordable in many places, speaking from experience.
I dare you to travel on your own car in the depths of winter across the USA in the same timeframe as a airplane.
One thing people don’t seem to grasp in many different situations is the vastness of the US. Most states are bigger than a lot of countries. You can fit several European countries into some of the biggest US states.
True, but when I lived in the US the majority of my trips weren’t cross-state, but 1-10 miles which can totally be cycled if the infrastructure was there.
The reason you can’t is much more about infrastructure than weather, especially within cities
Source: I live in Scandinavia and everyone bikes even when it’s cold
Just out of curiosity, do you have snow tires for bikes or are the paths cleared well enough not to worry about it?
Where I live we often get mixes of sleet and ice along with the snow and since it is sporadic throughout winter we do a pretty mediocre job of funding the removal. If we didn’t have so many wide roads it probably wouldn’t take as much effort.
I run studded tyres during winter, but the city also uses a clearing technique where they first clear off all of the snow from the bike lanes and then salt them to prevent ice. This kind of wreaks havoc on your components through corrosion, but leaves the lanes highly usable throughout winter.
I use the studded tyres as an insurance policy against any poorly cleared spots. They are usually pretty good about it, but sometimes the weather will just be bad.
I’ve been told that fat bikes do better on full snow, but I’ve never ridden one myself so I can’t confirm it.
Here not just bikes talks about winter cycling in Olou, Finland. The answer is yes, the city needs to manage the lanes during winter instead of letting it be acceptable to push snow in bike lanes or leave them uncleared. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
This was exactly what I was going to link.
Certainly in my city bike lanes and sidewalks are cleared and salted before main roads. Though we just had the warmest January on record so a lot less snow to think about 😬
Even in the US, there are places that are bike friendly in the winter. Minnesota has a big winter biking culture, both for commuting and for recreation.
I live in rural Norway up in the mountain side. We have wind, snow, ice and rain like hell, and I have ~150 elevation to get to the main road to get anywhere.
… I’m still considering getting a bike for all the mentioned benefits.
The one downside is that a lot of people I know have had some nasty accidents and broke a bone or something. Sure, in cars you are also at the risk of kissing a tree at highway speed, but bike accidents feel a lot more common and have a lot less protective metal involved
Arrive to work soaked in sweat because it’s been 100+ degrees every day for the past 8 weeks.
Workplaces that require employees to be presentable then offer locker rooms, showers, and enough reasonable time to get ready to accommodate the fact that everyone who works a service job arrives soaked in sweat.
You lose the benefits of it being cheap, but an ebike is a decent solution
I rode one for a while in college.
Didn’t really help with the sweat problem between April and October in Texas. Or was less work than pedaling, but nothing aside from air conditioning helps with the sweat issue in Texas summer heat.
Being cheap is the entire benefit. Everything else is just a plus. If you lose the cost it’s not worth it at that point.
It’s still a lot cheaper than a car, and quite a bit faster than a regular bike, but it’s expensive enough you care if it’s stolen.
But somehow 20k plus for a vehicle with the added maintenance, gas, inspection, and registration is. Gotcha.
Never said owning a car was cheap. I said if I have to shell out 5 grand for a bike that I still have to drive without ac/heat in the summer and winter it defeats the purpose.
Well, that is largely caused by cars.
Even without global warming, 100°f days or not exactly uncommon in large chunk of the US.
Because they made a lot of mmmmoneyyyy for their producers.
Welcome to the Netherlands. If there’s anything that fills me with pride it’s our cycling culture. Most people have a car too, but I don’t, and I do everything by bike and public transport.
Denmark checking in. Not unusual for people in the city not to have a car. I’m happy with my bike that I use every workday to cycle into the city centrum in all weather - I love dressing myself up in rain boots, rain paints and rain jacket and be on my way in heavy rain or snow, feeling like I’m in an episode of Deadliest Catch
I cycled from Bruges to Amsterdam this summer and honestly it was an amazing holiday. Few days with headwind made us wish we had eBikes but the infrastructure was amazing. We basically could cycle on bike roads for 90%+ of the distance and felt very safe doing so. We loved especially Zealand landscape, food and small roads passing through the fields.
I think few countries would have made the holiday so pleasuring and chill, and obviously we encountered just so many people going on with their daily life even between cities with their bikes (I am assuming 20+ km rides). I have noticed that with ebikes also elder people had complete freedom to use bikes as they wished.
I really hope the dutch model is followed by more cities or countries.
I dream of immigrating there.
I’m disabled in a way that means I can’t use one, but can use a car, which kinda sucks.
Fortunately bike infrastructure usually helps me in my chair, so I’m all in favor of wider bike adoption.
“Just leave it anywhere there is a secure structure” - Yes, I see this regularly when I have to maneuver around bikes carelessly “parked” in the middle of the pedestrian walkway…
Someone can probably do the math, but i have a hunch that humans are technically not very fuel efficient if you look at calories burned pr the total mass being moved along.
But whatever it is biking is awesome, but being technically correct is even better.
I used to love to bike but I moved to an area with steep hills and it’s too high effort. Maybe fine for exercise but I always used them for transport and you can’t arrive at work or a music lesson drenched in sweat. Wish they would install those hill lifts some countries have. I walk now. Would love an electric but the expense makes it much more painful when it’s stolen (and every one of my regular bikes has eventually been stolen).
